Tent Life in Siberia eBook

CHAPTER XVIII

WHY THE KORAKS WANDER—­THEIR INDEPENDENCE—­CHEERLESS LIFE—­USES OF
THE REINDEER—­KORAK IDEAS OF DISTANCE—­“MONARCH OF THE BRASS-HANDLED
SWORD”

The Wandering Koraks of Kamchatka, who are divided
into about forty different bands, roam over the great
steppes in the northern part of the peninsula, between
the 58th and the 63d parallels of latitude. Their
southern limit is the settlement of Tigil, on the west
coast, where they come annually to trade, and they
are rarely found north of the village of Penzhina,
two hundred miles from the head of the Okhotsk Sea.
Within these limits they wander almost constantly with
their great herds of reindeer, and so unsettled and
restless are they in their habits, that they seldom
camp longer than a week in any one place. This,
however, is not attributable altogether to restlessness
or love of change. A herd of four or five thousand
reindeer will in a very few days paw up the snow and
eat all the moss within a radius of a mile from the
encampment, and then, of course, the band must move
to fresh pasture ground. Their nomadic life,
therefore, is not entirely a choice, but partly a
necessity, growing out of their dependence upon the
reindeer. They must wander or their deer
will starve, and then their own starvation follows
as a natural consequence. Their unsettled mode
of life probably grew, in the first place, out of the
domestication of the reindeer, and the necessity which
it involved of consulting first the reindeer’s
wants; but the restless, vagabondish habits thus produced
have now become a part of the Korak’s very nature,
so that he could hardly live in any other way, even
had he an opportunity of so doing. This wandering,
isolated, independent existence has given to the Koraks
all those characteristic traits of boldness, impatience
of restraint, and perfect self-reliance, which distinguish
them from the Kamchadals and the other settled inhabitants
of Siberia. Give them a small herd of reindeer,
and a moss steppe to wander over, and they ask nothing
more from all the world. They are wholly independent
of civilisation and government, and will neither submit
to their laws nor recognise their distinctions.
Every man is a law unto himself so long as he owns
a dozen reindeer; and he can isolate himself, if he
so chooses, from all human kind, and ignore all other
interests but his own and his reindeer’s.
For the sake of convenience and society they associate
themselves in bands of six or eight families each;
but these bands are held together only by mutual consent,
and recognise no governing head. They have a leader
called a taiyon who is generally the largest
deer-owner of the band, and he decides all such questions
as the location of camps and time of removal from
place to place; but he has no other power, and must
refer all graver questions of individual rights and